Promoting the Role of Young People in HIV Response

Your Excellencies,

Distinguished Delegates,

Colleagues and friends,

Thirty years into the epidemic and 20 years into the global AIDS response, the lesson learned remains the same: we cannot ignore the most affected populations if we are to achieve the global commitments made on AIDS and the Millennium Development Goals.

Young people are a most affected population. At the end of 2009, young women and men accounted for 41per cent of all new infections.

Evidence shows that where we have effective programmes and services in place to prevent HIV infection among young people, we are achieving positive results.

HIV prevalence among young people is falling in 16 of the 21 countries most affected by AIDS. And, for the first time, data shows that reductions in HIV prevalence among young people have coincided with a change in sexual behavior.

Young people are choosing to wait longer before starting sex. They are having fewer multiple partners and there is an increased use of condoms.

Young people are leading a prevention revolution that can be sustained with the right support.

Among the primary goals of the UNAIDS strategy is reducing sexual transmission by half, including among young people. To achieve the target, all of us—from global leaders to community members and families—must empower young people to protect themselves from HIV.

In 17 countries most affected by HIV, we as UNAIDS, have committed to work to increase to 80% the proportion of young people with comprehensive knowledge on HIV. To do so, we must meet them where they are—whether in or out of school.

We have also committed to increase condom use and to HIV testing and counseling among young people.

As a partner and co-convener on UNAIDS action to empower young people, UNFPA is determined to deliver on these results. We will advocate for increasing health, education and livelihood investments in young people, and addressing gender equality and sexual and reproductive health.

We will continue to promote the rights of young people, especially those most marginalized, to participate at all levels of policy development, implementation and monitoring, and to lead the AIDS response.

As we enter a new era of the epidemic, I call upon governments, civil society organizations and all concerned to ensure that countries support effective programmes for and with young people, with dedicated financial and technical resources.

Together we need to revise and enforce policies and programmes that meet human rights standards and remove legal barriers that prevent access to sexual and reproductive health services.

We need to promote responsible sexual behavior through comprehensive sexuality education and innovative social and behavior change communication for youth in school and those in community settings.

We need to provide youth-friendly sexual and reproductive health services, including harm reduction programmes for those injecting drugs.

And we need to fully engage young people in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of HIV prevention programmes.

UNFPA has experienced first-hand the leadership of young people in HIV prevention programmes around the world. We have learnt that we can reverse the AIDS epidemic if we work in partnership with young people.

I urge all of you to heed the call from the youth that gathered in Mali that we ensure their rights, give them space, voice, capacity and resources to change the course of HIV and collect the data to show just how far they have been able to fly.

Let us meet those demands and demonstrate to young people that we believe in them and their prevention revolution.

Thank you.